The Three-day High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness ended on Thursday in the Ghanaian capital with the adoption of an 8-page document titled, "Accra Action Agenda to Improve the Efficiency of Development Business".
The Accra Agenda for Action is a product of an unprecedented alliance of development partners - developing and donor countries, emerging economies, the UN and multilateral institutions, global funds and civil society organizations. They all participated in discussions leading up to the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness, hosted by the Ghanaian government and organized by the OECD and the World Bank.
Forum participants used the development goals set out in the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness signed in 2005 as a baseline. Their discussions on the need to make aid more effective were based on consultations with more than 80 developing countries, all OECD donors and a large number of civil society organizations from around the world.
Evidence from a survey of 54 developing countries provided the factual basis for these discussions. Evaluations of how 8 recipient and 11 donor countries are implementing the Paris Declaration some three years after signing it also lent critical evidence of where action is needed.
Key points agreed in the Accra Agenda for Action include:
- Predictability - donors will provide 3-5 year forward information on their planned aid to partner countries.
- Country systems - partner country systems will be used to deliver aid as the first option, rather than donor systems.
- Conditionality - donors will switch from reliance on prescriptive conditions about how and when aid money is spent to conditions based on the developing country's own development objectives.
- Untying - donors will relax restrictions that prevent developing countries from buying the goods and services they need from whomever and wherever they can get the best quality at the lowest price.
